


The Past Five Years (Without You)

by WorkInProgress84



Category: The Rookie (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon until end of S2, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, First Kiss, Future Fic, I Will Go Down With This Ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27894712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorkInProgress84/pseuds/WorkInProgress84
Summary: Lucy didn't think the end of her probationary year would mean the end of her acquaintance with Tim. Certainly not with the way their friendship had been progressing, not with the plans she'd had for them.Of course it would take a life-threatening injury for him to show up again and shake up Lucy's world.
Relationships: Tim Bradford/Lucy Chen
Comments: 16
Kudos: 141
Collections: Chenford





	The Past Five Years (Without You)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm only semi-happy with this but I've been writing it for a couple of weeks and I can't stand it anymore.  
> I'm new to the fandom, first time writing for it, hopefully none of this reads as too ooc.

Lucy Chen considered herself lucky.

As a cop, you hardly managed to coast by uninjured for any significant length of time. Every street corner you turned, every quiet house you entered could be your last. A grim perspective, but it came with the job. 

And yet, it had been five years since the last time she'd been stuck in the hospital for more than a few hours in a row. Even now, tucked in bed with her left arm in a cast, a badly sprained ankle, a concussion she'd been cleared for and an entire side of her face black and blue, she still thought she was better off than that last time. Then again, nothing could quite surpass being buried alive.

So, lucky.

The nurse who'd come to get her lunch had even given her lemon-flavored jello, her favorite. Sure, the reruns on TV were boring her to death, but her arm didn't hurt much from the surgery she'd had the day before, which was a blessing in itself.

But luck wasn't a cornucopia, and Lucy's ran out with two quick raps on her open door and a bouquet of flowers.

She stared at the face behind the colorful blooms, a face once so familiar she could see it when she closed her eyes, and gaped like a fish out of water. She spared a second to be grateful her condition didn't require cardiac monitoring, or the machine would've been beeping like crazy right then.

He was still as handsome as he'd been four years before, still as fit, his hair a touch longer, the laughing lines around his eyes a bit more pronounced. Jealousy clawed at her heart when she caught herself wondering if he'd merely aged or if someone had dug these lines for him.

A maelstrom of emotions raced through her: surprise, and cold fury right on its heels. Unfortunately, so did a stupid amount of affection Lucy could have sworn she was done with, too.

"Always looking for the opportunity to put your feet up, I see," her ghost said, going for cheerful and missing it by miles.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" she snapped. It was mean, but-

"I deserve that," he acknowledged with a stoic nod.

"What are you doing here, Sergeant Bradford?"

"I heard you played Icarus so I thought I'd check on you."

"Oh, really? Suddenly now you care? You have a lot of nerve-" Lucy choked on the rest of her sentence, bitter and upset and all those things she'd first felt when she'd thought she would never see him again.

"Look, Boot-"

"It's Officer Chen," she cut him off, cold. "I haven't been a boot in five years, which you may have realized if you hadn't ghosted me."

He pursed his lips like he was biting back on a comment. Although she hid it, it surprised her: he'd never held back from telling her when he believed she was wrong.

He stepped into her room. With a pang, she thought to herself there had been a time she would have loved for Tim Bradford to show up at her door with flowers.

"Can we talk?"

The cop in Lucy catalogued all the information his body language gave away. The Tim she knew would’ve been more careful with that intel; another thing that had changed, unless he was deliberately letting her see. It dawned on her she didn't know that man anymore.

Here he was, letting her see… Shoulders drooping forward the slightest bit, one hand in his jeans’ pocket, he looked unsure, but the way his eyes shone, open wider and pleading with her, allowed his hope to peek through.

"Look, I-" he started then huffed, frustrated. Tim Bradford didn't stammer. "I know I might not deserve the chance to talk things through, but I promise everything will make a lot more sense if you allow me to explain."

She studied him some more as he let the bouquet fall to his side. Yep, still fit. Still one of the most handsome men she'd ever met, even dressed in simple jeans and a t-shirt.

"I can't exactly throw you out," she hedged.

He ran a hand on the back of his neck, the tiniest smile curling the side of his mouth at her lukewarm permission. She steeled herself against a sight she’d so sorely missed. "I was counting on your inability to get up to kick my ass to walk out of here unharmed."

She bit back on her own smile and tapped into a readily available vein of resentment. "I'm resourceful, I'm sure I can think of something."

"I know." This time a proud smile grew that didn’t belong here anymore. Lucy swallowed against the boulder in her throat.

"Talk, then. Oh wait, this is going to be good, let me get comfortable."

Lucy took the remote for her bed and started adjusting the height of the top part, bringing herself upright, then down a smidge, then up again, taking her sweet time. It was childish of her, but she'd waited five long years to find out what she'd done so wrong that he'd just write her off from his life; he could stew for a few seconds more.

When she turned her eyes to him again, he’d taken a seat in the lone plastic chair near the room’s window and deposited the flowers on her bedside table. He looked annoyed as hell and, just like that, Lucy was back in far more familiar territory.

“Go on, then,” she prompted him. “I can’t wait to finally hear why you were such an ass.”

“Okay,” he started like he was bracing himself, “first I would like to… apologize.”

“Should I call for a nurse, that looked painful,” Lucy quipped with a raised eyebrow.

“Shut up. You know I don’t do apologies.”

“I must be very special, then,” she said sarcastically.

“Yeah, you are.”

Well.

She wasn’t expecting that. The earnest look on his face was too serious for this to be Tim pulling her leg. It pulled at heartstrings she’d been so sure were done vibrating for him. He shook his head and evaded eye contact when she just kept silent.

“Look, I’m sorry for disappearing like I did, but I had my reasons. I was doing the right thing.”

Her year with Tim had helped her develop her bullshit-o-meter beyond what was expected of your standard police officer, and this smelled like grade-A bullshit. “Enlighten me.”

“When I stopped being your training officer... things changed. I couldn’t stay in touch.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He started rubbing his palms together slowly, an unusual show of anxiety for him. “If I’m honest, even before that, the lines weren’t as clear as they should have been. It was your fault, really.”

Lucy almost choked. “My fault?”

“Yes! You were always emoting all over my shop!” He somehow made it sound like a bad thing. "And you- you- infected me or something."

"You never had any problem putting me back in my place when I overstepped, if I recall."

"Did it stop you?" he asked with a pointed look.

"Touché. So you stopped talking to me because I had too many feelings? I thought we were friends! Friends talk to their friends about their feelings," Lucy defended herself.

His blue gaze intensified, eyes narrowing like he had her right where he wanted her. She could almost hear it in her head: _'Target acquired. Target locked. Awaiting missile launch.'_ It didn't bode well for her. 

"Is that what we were, Boot? Friends?" 

_Target destroyed._ Tim had always had eerily accurate aim.

"I- don't know what you mean," she shrugged with her good shoulder, "of course we were friends, _you_ said we were friends." Her nonchalance didn't sound very convincing. Of course he saw right through her.

"Give me more credit than that. You think I didn't notice the way your eyes changed when you looked at me, or the way you smiled a little wider when you smiled at me?"

Lucy wasn't ashamed of her feelings for Tim; she could justify them a thousand times over. But to have been so transparent that Tim himself had been able to spot her admittedly mighty crush? It stung.

"I was always professional."

"You were," he admitted, so easily it threw her for a loop.

She hadn't expected an acknowledgement of her good work - Tim had never been very liberal with his compliments back when they shared a shop, and considering how things had ended, she couldn't have imagined there'd be any admiration lost between them. Not on his side, anyway. On the contrary, she'd been braced herself for a barrage of recriminations and accusations of ruining their professional relationship with her stupid feelings. But… apparently not? Good to know he still knew how to keep her on her toes.

"So what?" she shook her head. "Is that why you stopped talking to me? You were uncomfortable your rookie had a crush on you?"

"No. I stayed away because you were a young officer whose career had barely started and I was a sergeant of the LAPD. One who couldn't handle the beaming smiles and the loaded looks. I'm only human, Lucy."

She frowned. Maybe the doctors' diagnosis was wrong and her concussion was worse than they'd thought, because it sure as hell sounded like Tim Bradford had just confessed that he'd like-liked her back when she'd still been his rookie.

"But yesterday- when Lopez told me you'd jumped off the roof of a three-story building, I was-" he ran a hand through his hair, " _God_ , terrified. Damn proud, but terrified. I hadn't felt this way since-" 

He cut himself off, pinching his lips, but Lucy knew.

"Since Isabel," she finished for him.

"Yeah, since Isabel," he said, defeated. "And it made me realize something else."

"What's that?" Lucy croaked.

"I was a fool for thinking I could forget you."

Lucy's breath caught in her chest, unbidden tears springing to her eyes: he was saying everything she'd wanted to hear five years ago, and yet pure elation had to fight tooth and nail to overcome the frustration and anger she felt at his words.

This was Bishop's warning all over again: be smart, don't date a cop. Except it came from the most hypocritical place: Tim had started dating Isabel in the academy, and he'd married her, for God's sake. 

"So what you're saying is you _liked_ me back then, and you knew I liked you, yet you made the unilateral decision to set me loose in order to save my career? You didn't think I had a say in this?"

“Um.”

“Tim, you were horrible to me, do you even realize how much that hurt, coming from you? I endured it for months before giving up: after we stopped riding together, you stopped responding to my texts, you refused to hang out if I was there. I wasn’t even a blip on your radar.” Yep, the tears were falling, but they were definitely angry tears. “Do you remember what you told me the day I showed up at your door to talk about it?”

She’d tried to get to the bottom of this. Boy, had she ever. It had been three months since he’d left Mid-Wilshire when her patience had snapped. Tim Bradford was a private man who was uncomfortable talking about his feelings, she respected that, but something had had to give. She’d needed answers to understand what she’d done to make him clam up like she was nothing but a virtual stranger.

Lucy had psyched herself up and driven to Tim’s house, ready to hear him out and get to the bottom of this. She’d knocked and he’d opened the door with an eye-roll that had felt like a slap in the face. He hadn’t let her in. Instead he’d kept her standing out there on his doorstep like she was a virtual stranger; the message had been crystal clear: she wasn't welcome here. Lucy’s insides had withered with humiliation, mortification and incomprehension.

Her carefully rehearsed speech had flown out the window and she’d just blurted something along the lines of _'Tim, what the hell is going on?'_

“I was worried about you, and you just shrugged and said ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ and then you basically told me to go to hell, like I was nothing but gum under your shoe.”

“I didn’t-”

“Yes, you did!” she raised her voice. It was so unexpected, Tim stood up in alarm, placating hands in front of him. His placating hands could go to hell. “And all this time, I thought I’d messed up! You mattered to me. I missed you so much I thought I would go mad with it! I thought I’d broken some cardinal rule from Tim Bradford’s Book of Values, or that I’d been too obvious and it’d made you hate me-”

“No, no, never-” he shook his head as he approached the bed. If he came closer, Lucy would hit him. Okay, maybe not, but he did deserve at least a good slap across the face.

“I can’t-” she choked, deflating. She wiped the tears away, wincing when the excessive force hurt her bruised face. “I can’t talk to you, Tim.” His hand fell to his side and he looked down, defeated but unsurprised. “That decision wasn’t yours alone to make. You didn’t do the right thing, you just did what was best for you.”

That shut him up. He looked stunned, as if he'd never questioned his own intentions when he'd thrown away a good, albeit frustratingly platonic, friendship. Something played behind his eyes like maybe things were rearranging. Lucy hated herself for still being so soft for this man, but she'd be damned if witnessing his epiphany wasn't breaking her heart. 

"Go home, Tim." He opened his mouth, an argument on the tip of his tongue, but Lucy shook her head. "I'm tired, I need to rest. Thanks for checking on me."

He looked like a kicked puppy, lost and unsure. She closed her eyes against the heartwrenching sight and let her head fall back against the pillow.

"Take care, Officer Chen."

Lucy couldn't bear to watch him leave again.

Persuasion was key. She was lucky, lucky, lucky.

***

Tim had painted his front door over. Four and a half years ago, it had been red. Now it was navy blue. He'd removed the doormat, too. Probably so people wouldn't get the crazy idea they were welcome here.

Lucy sighed, annoyed with herself: obviously she was still upset if her brain resorted to such cheap shots. Perhaps she was nervous, too. Nervous and stalling, but she had reasons to be.

She'd felt terrible for sending Tim away at the hospital, which was rich considering how he'd treated her. He'd had good intentions, he'd come to explain himself (which she'd stopped hoping for years ago), and he'd bared his emotions in a move so uncharacteristic, Lucy knew it must have cost him.

Not that he didn't deserve her anger and resentment but, once she'd searched her own heart, and as reluctant as she'd been to admit it after so long… she was still as weak for this man as she'd been the last time she'd seen him right here on this very porch.

She was still weak and he still sent her heart racing.

When he'd disappeared through her bedroom door, that crestfallen look on his face engraved on Lucy's mind, he'd taken a piece of her heart with him. Another piece, anyway.

Funny thing, she'd been so sure she was over him. But seeing Tim in the flesh again, to have him within touching distance… It was like no time had passed at all, and the feelings hadn't disappeared, they'd merely been dormant, waiting to awaken. 

They had a ton of stuff they needed to talk about, but if Tim was amenable, perhaps they could start again on healthier grounds. 

Start anew, four years later…

It felt like that was how long she’d been lurking in front of that door. It wasn’t helping her nerves. The longer she postponed actually knocking, the more keyed up she felt: what if he didn't want to see her with how callous she'd been? She was afraid knocking would only bring her closer to an impending refusal to see her again. But she needed to know, didn't she?

Growling to psych herself up once and for all, her clenched fist connecting with the door felt like a punch rather than a knock. A bark echoed from within that worked wonders to loosen the knot in her stomach; now that was something she was looking forward to.

"Kojo, down!"

His voice made the anxiety flare up again. Surely that emotional roller-coaster couldn't be good for her.

Tim appeared a few seconds later, cracking the door open to peer outside. His eyebrows shot up in surprise and a bolt of longing pierced her; how had she survived all those years without seeing the perpetual ridge between his eyebrows if only six weeks away made her feel like that. 

"Officer Chen."

She kept her wince to herself: after all, she had told him to call her that. She would've prefered Boot, if she was honest with herself - probably because, in Lucy's brain, by the end of her probationary year, it had no longer sounded like a reminder of her inferiority but rather like an endearment.

But whatever, she wouldn't allow him to throw her off her game with his wariness: she deserved it, but she'd come here for a reason and she'd rehearsed her speech, so it was show time.

"I am so mad at you."

He blinked. "I… was already quite clear on that, if that's what you came to say."

"It's not."

"O-kay? How did you know I'd be here?"

"I asked around. We need to talk."

She'd practiced that bit to make it as convincing as possible in case he would bring up how their last conversation had ended. It paid off: Tim obligingly stepped aside and let her in.

Lucy was on her knees in the entrance before he'd even closed the door, greeting Kojo with the same enthusiasm he was showing her, trampling the ground as his stumpy little tail wiggled at top speed, his excited whimpers mixing with Lucy's exclamations over how good the dog looked. He'd obviously attended the famous Bradford School of Restraint: he wasn't even trying to lick her face.

"Yes, I know! I missed you, too, buddy, look at you! Who's a good dog? Who's the best dog? Is it you? Yes, it's you!" Lucy cooed, only glancing up when she remembered they had an audience who was probably looking down on her for the undignified baby talk.

Tim was watching them, indeed, arms crossed over his chest as he waited for the reunion to run its course, but there was no long-suffering annoyance on his face. Although the grin was small and private, it was undeniably there. Lucy could see it in the quirk of his lips and the twinkle in his eyes: he was amused. It was a good look on him.

She cleared her throat as she got to her feet. "It's good to see him so happy," she commented, self-consciously tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

"He's happy to see you. I see you're all healed up. How long has the cast been off?" he asked, pointing to her arm and motioning her towards a couch big enough to fit ten people.

Small talk, then. Well, easing into things was preferable to rushing headfirst into the heavy stuff she meant to dredge up. 

"Three weeks yesterday," she replied, sitting down a good seat away from him.

She did a quick scan of her surroundings. She couldn't even blame it on her cop training, honestly it was nothing more than pure, unadulterated curiosity; in the year she'd been Tim's rookie, she'd never been inside his space. She'd always pictured it as quasi-monastic, a utilitarian space that was more of an extension of the station than an actual home: a kitchen stripped to its essentials, a bedroom equipped with the bare minimum, certainly a home gym... She'd got it all wrong. While Tim's sparsely furnished house wouldn't have made the cover of Architecture Digest, it definitely was a home, not just a house, and nothing clashed, the blue and white theme giving the place a peaceful aura she knew was paramount after the harder shifts. She refused to believe there wasn't some kind of home gym somewhere, though. Maybe in the garage.

"How are you feeling?" His shrewd eyes assessed her, professional. Kojo plopped down by his master's feet. "Have you been going to physiotherapy? Don't forget your body is an important asset, you need to take care of it."

"You're not my T.O. anymore," she chided him with a huff she hoped didn't sound too fond.

"You mentioned that, too."

And just like that, they were back on topic and nervousness flooded Lucy's bloodstream again. She took a deep breath in; the last thing she needed was to get emotional like she had at the hospital: she'd hit him with a wall of feelings and it hadn't exactly done her any good, so calm and collected it was.

Besides, she didn't want to freak him out. She had a hunch this tough guy wouldn't have the first clue what to do with dramatic bursts of romance. Despite his own speech at the hospital (Lucy's heart still raced whenever she thought about it), effusive wasn't the first word that came to mind when one thought of Tim Bradford. The tricky part was to combine heartfelt and to-the-point.

"Tim... The way you treated me, the way you brushed me aside like my feelings didn't matter, do you understand how insensitive and shitty that was?" 

Tim nodded once, a timid admission but one nonetheless. His pinched lips and his knitted eyebrows said he wasn't happy about it, but it meant a lot to Lucy that he didn't try to justify his behavior.

So she went for the jugular, because she knew he'd respect that and appreciate her not beating around the bush. Feelings talk, but the Bradford way.

"If you really felt like you said you did… how could you walk away?" The strangled words sounded bitter. She'd tried to make them sound less intense when she'd rehearsed them but she'd failed: the sense of waste was too great.

Tim's mouth opened but nothing came out. She seemed to have stumped him, like he'd suddenly forgotten his answer and he needed some time to find it again. She watched him run a hand over his face, blue eyes unfocused as they flitted from one point to another.

"I really thought I only had your best interests in mind. I didn't want to be a stain on your professional record. You had so much on the line: nothing much would've changed for me, the slander wouldn't have affected me, I would've been the lucky bastard who'd hooked up with his pretty young rookie- don't look at me like that, you know damn well that's how other people would've talked. No one would've batted an eyelash at the abuse of authority either. I didn't want that for you."

"That decision wasn't yours alone to make," she repeated.

"I know."

The Tim Bradford she knew had the propensity to insist he was right in all things - and most times, he was. His fierce self-assurance made him annoying at best, punchable at worst. Here he was meek and humble, a drastic, momentous change. She ought to have been happy he recognized his mistakes, but he was dousing her righteous anger in solicitude and it was throwing Lucy off-balance.

"Two months after you came here, Rachel and I decided long-distance wasn't working: I'd just been transferred as sergeant, we were both starting new very time-consuming jobs, everything was hectic, we couldn't find a balance. And I wasn't as invested as in the beginning," he added, pointedly anchoring his eyes in hers. Lucy gulped, reading the message loud and clear.

She'd lost touch with Rachel herself, between her friend's busy schedule and her mandatory adjustment period with her new partner, and so she'd first heard about the break-up from Angela, months after the fact. It had brought on a slew of conflicting emotions, none of which had led Lucy anywhere: single or not, Tim didn't want anything to do with her. Or so she'd thought.

She cleared her throat. "Does it mean, if I'd still been in your life at that point, and since I wasn't your rookie anymore, you would've given us a chance?"

"I don't know," he answered truthfully. "Dating another cop, it's… a lot." Right. Isabel and all the abandonment and trust issues she'd left in her wake. "A lot of worrying."

“Do you regret your life with Isabel? Loving her, marrying her?” she asked quietly. Chances were he was going to blow up at her for daring to ask such a ridiculous question, but what did she have to lose?

“Sometimes.” His blue eyes shot up to hers for a second before dropping away, mouth set in a hard line, like the admission shamed him. Lucy's heart broke for him and she clenched her fists in her lap so she wouldn't reach over and take his hand. 

When she thought about it, Tim's only true moments of vulnerability had derived from his messed-up relationship with Isabel - fear of imminent, gruesome death notwithstanding. His love for her had brought him to the brink of madness. Their colleagues liked to poke fun at him for being a severe and uptight robot - Lucy had seen this man _feel_ to the point of excruciating pain, very much human.

If she put herself in his shoes, she could perhaps understand why he'd been in such a hurry to find reasons to shut her out. She didn't approve, sure as hell didn't like it... but she understood.

"I'm going to say something very dumb, now, but I think you need to hear it," Lucy said, gentle but firm. She waited until he raised his eyes to hers again. "I'm not Isabel."

He frowned at her. "I know that."

"Good," she smiled. "And I'm more than capable of handling myself, both in the field and out of it, so you don't have to worry about me."

"Is that what you were doing when you jumped off that building, handling yourself?"

"I'm sure Angela told you that either I jumped or I got shot then fell off anyway," she reminded him with a raised eyebrow. "I made the right call. Plus Alvarez got the guy in the end, so everything worked out."

Tim's jaw twitched and he wrung his hands, once. "Everything worked out, really? Lucy..." he trailed off, aggravated. It didn't matter how he said it, her name on his lips still sent a shiver down her spine.

"Is that what you meant, when you said being with a cop was a lot of worrying?" The apologetic look he shot her spoke volumes. _Oh._ "And you're not prepared to do it again, are you? I don't understand… why show up at the hospital, then? It makes no sense."

Tim was too circumspect a man to make decisions without carefully weighing the pros and the cons first. The memory of what he'd said at the hospital, as impassioned as she'd ever seen him, still made her dizzy with giddiness, so she'd thought things today would progress another way. Instead she could feel her heart breaking all over again, just the way it had all those years ago. The only difference was, now she knew why they wouldn't happen, and the sense of waste was even greater. 

She stood up in a daze, uncomprehending. Her purse's chain clang as she did; she hadn't even taken it off.

"I didn't have you pegged for a coward, Tim." Her voice wobbled. She couldn't have cared less: she had nothing left to lose.

"You have no idea what you're talking about," he shot back harshly. "You don't know what it's like: the fear, the pain, the absolute certainty you'll never see the person you care the most about again."

Lucy saw red. "Oh, I don't? I have dated cops before, and I dated a firefighter for six months," she spat.

"I know," he growled. Oh, he wasn't happy she was bringing up Emmett, his nostrils flaring up in anger as his jaw clenched. He had no right to be jealous, none at all and yet… despite everything, Lucy relished it, his glare sending very primal tingles down to her toes.

"Who told you?"

"Does it matter?"

"No. But then you know that I know. And what about you? You think I haven't heard about your own exploits, Sergeant Bradford? You think it didn't scare me?"

"What are you-"

"Do you want me to list five years worth of dangerous situations? You're not the only one who kept tabs."

She didn't know why he looked so shocked, like the revelation was a surprise to him. It hadn't been her healthiest idea, but those snippets of his professional life had been the only way to keep some sort of link with him. 

"I heard about the crack house."

His entire face pinched up annoyed at being caught-out. Yeah, how about that for reckless. Leaping off a building was daunting, for sure, but it was right up there with unexpectedly being jumped by three drug-addicts in a crack house and getting stabbed. Twice.

Lucy had tried to take a leaf out of Tim's book and remain professional but she remembered her hoarse _'is he okay'_ when Angela had hung up the phone, grave, and immediately looked at her. A punctured liver, stitches galore and a hospital stay later, Lucy had started breathing again.

"And I survived," she went on, strangled. "I couldn't see you to make sure you were okay, and it was torture, but I survived."

"I'm not brave like you."

"Come off it, I'm not brave; I just trust that you're always doing your best to stay out of harm's way, because you swore to protect and to serve, and that includes not taking unnecessary risks so you can keep doing it as long as possible. Now ask me how I know exactly what's in that thick skull of yours."

"How do you know?" he parroted, but there was fear in his eyes as he awaited her answer, eyebrows knitted.

"I am the exact same way." She pushed the sentence at him with as much conviction as she could muster. "In part because I had an excellent training officer who barked it at me for a year straight. I guess it stuck."

Tim hung his head, effectively hiding the emotions that had started playing across his face, but not before Lucy could glimpse uncertainty and hesitance. She tried not to let hope take root. She failed. 

Then he ran a hand over his face, shook his head and sighed, and Lucy's stomach plummeted, eyes suddenly watering with unbidden tears. He wouldn't even look at her. Not preparing for the worst had been careless, the overabundance of confidence stupid. She was disappointed in herself for not anticipating a sad outcome.

"Okay," she murmured, simply because she was unable to speak any louder. "I guess… goodbye, Tim."

Somehow she didn't collapse. Although she couldn't feel her legs, her feet carried her to the door.

"Wait, wait. Lucy, wait!" He pushed the door closed before she could open it all the way, startling her; she'd been in such a daze she hadn't heard him stand up. "I trust you."

"Do you?" she scoffed. The situation warranted sounding a little disillusioned, didn't it?

"Yes." 

"Do you, really?"

Hesitant fingertips grazed her elbow, electrifying her. "You're a good police officer, Lucy Chen. You're also the most stubborn mule I've ever met. A strong, compassionate, gorgeous mule."

She bit back a smile, secretly tickled pink. That was high praise, coming from him. "You'd know all about stubborn mules, being one yourself."

He chuckled once, a silent admission. "Are you sure you want to do this? It's not going to be easy just because you're not my rookie anymore."

" _Easy_?" she said as she finally turned around. "You think I want _easy_? Have you and I ever been easy?" 

Her exasperation vanished the instant she realized how close Tim stood. There was a lot of him right there; they were practically chest to chest, his palm flat on the door behind her, his scent all around her. Maybe she should've felt threatened, a strong man like him caging her in like this. The reality was that his body was pulling her in and she was the opposite of afraid. He'd move if she asked. She knew this down to her bone marrow.

"I guess easy's not our thing," he conceded, his voice gone deep. Perhaps the proximity affected him as well. The way it rumbled in the minute space between them made Lucy tremble a little. His eyes dropped to her mouth and she smiled. "Is it okay if I-"

She rolled up on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his lips. Finally. It lasted but a couple of seconds but fireworks blew up behind her eyelids and her skin erupted in goosebumps. Letting herself fall back down, she looked at him from under her eyelashes.

"I'm sorry, you were saying?" she murmured.

"Um." Heavy-lidded blue eyes blinked slowly, as if he was coming out of a trance.

"Good," Lucy smiled, not a little gratified at the effect she had on him. "Want to do this ag-"

Tim muffled the rest of her offer with another kiss and wrapped strong, gentle arms around her, bringing the long, strong line of his body flush against hers, bending her backwards to get at her mouth. One arm wound around her waist while the other snaked up her spine, curling a possessive hand in her hair that made her whole body shiver with pleasure.

She'd had a hunch Tim would be fantastic at this, an overachiever in all things: he was kissing her within an inch of her life, throwing his whole body into it, crushing her to him in the most delicious way while he devoured her. It was delightful.

He pulled on her hair, turning up the heat, setting her on fire. Ever calculating, he took advantage of her appreciative gasp to breach her lips, a barely there, teasing flick of his tongue that made Lucy moan and grasp at any part of Tim she could reach: hips, biceps, thighs, neck, back, nothing felt like enough.

When he tore away from her mouth, it was to burrow into the crook of Lucy's neck, breathless. That was nice, too. She carded her fingers through his short hair as he slowly ran the tip of his nose over her skin, breathing her in.

"It tickles," she giggled. She wouldn't have pushed him away for the world.

"Get used to it, Boot."

She shivered. She was so on board with this plan.

"Call me Lucy again?"

He leaned back, just enough to lay his forehead on hers and cradle her face between sure, warm hands. A couple of her organs melted when his thumbs started stroking her cheekbones. God, this man would be the death of her.

"Lucy," he said seriously. Her heart soared so high she thought it would burst out of her chest. "I trust you. I do."

She placed a quick kiss at the corner of his frowning mouth. She felt it tick under her lips. Good. "Here's what I'm thinking: you kiss me some more, because this is really nice and long overdue, and then, later, we can talk about this again."

He groaned with a mutinous glare. "I like the first part of that plan. The other, not so much."

"You wouldn't," she chuckled, stroking his sides. "But you and I, Tim Bradford, we're going to have so many talks about our feelings, we're going to be communication masters."

He sighed long-sufferingly but wrapped her up in his arms again, burying his nose in her hair this time, and his body became more pliant as it relaxed against hers. Lucy couldn't wait to explore this sweet side of Tim's. 

"Because I'm not losing you again," she whispered into his shoulder. "Once was enough."

He squeezed her a little tighter and pressed a warm kiss to her temple. The feeling lingered on her skin long after he'd pulled back to anchor his eyes in hers. "Once was enough," he agreed.

This time, when Tim kissed her, it felt like a vow.


End file.
